


Bull in a China Shop

by rennywrites



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, theres character deaths but its stolen century so they're good in the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 14:13:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,192
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15775731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rennywrites/pseuds/rennywrites
Summary: The extended friendship of Merle Highchurch and Taako (you know, from TV?) has always been an unconventional one.





	Bull in a China Shop

The first time Merle ever met Taako, back on their home planet, he (mistakenly) sized him up as a young, wandering soul in need of sanctuary, and (even more mistakenly) attempted to convert him to Panism.  After laughing in his face for a solid ten minutes, the elf refused to call him anything other than “Pastor Pushover” for the next three months.

The two of them weren’t exactly close after that.  

When the Hunger chased them out of their home world, they spent the first fifteen or so cycles forming bonds with the other members of the crew as they searched desperately for a way to find the Light of Creation and stop their enemy.  They never fought or argued, but they only ever worked together when the need presented itself.

That changed during cycle twenty.  That was the first year that Lup died.

It had been quick, at least — a small mercy.  She and Taako had been camping out about a day’s walk from the Starblaster, looking for signs of the Light of Creation.  Taako had come staggering back a few nights later, half-dead and muttering something about a landslide. He and Davenport had rushed the elf down to the med bay as Lucretia tried desperately to console Magnus, who was openly weeping, and Barry, who had gone as pale and silent as death.  

The two of them sat in deafening silence as Merle methodically patched up Taako’s wounds.  It wasn’t that he didn’t _want_ to say something to comfort his friend; it was just that from the little he knew about Taako, he could surmise that a cleric’s attempt at comforting words wouldn’t do much in this situation.  He peered up at the elf’s face just once, to ask if the bandage he was tying around his ankle was too tight, and found him staring vacantly off into the distance. Taako wasn’t crying, but the horrible emptiness in his eyes was infinitely worse than tears.

For the next several weeks, it seemed like the air on the Starblaster was so fragile that a single misstep would shatter it.  Barry retreated into his lab, spending every waking moment furiously researching the Hunger and the Light of Creation. Magnus cried when he thought no one was looking.  And Taako never even left his room.

Davenport pulled him aside one day and asked him to deliver a plate of food to the isolated elf.  “And… if you’re feeling up to it, maybe try to talk to him? Not about… you know, but about anything else.  Even if all you can do is get him to say a few words about the weather, I think it would really do him some good.”

“Are you sure I’m the right person for this?” Merle replied hesitantly.  “We don’t really talk all that much.”

Davenport sighed.  “I have to go help Barry try to figure out where exactly the Light fell, and I think Lucretia’s busy showing Magnus some of her sketches to distract him from everything that’s been going on.”  He smiled tiredly. “But I _do_ think that you would be the best person for this, I promise.  Just… give it your best shot, okay?”

A few minutes later, he was standing outside the twins’ — no, Taako’s — door, balancing a tray of food on his hip.  He reached up and knocked twice just to be polite, and when no one answered he carefully let himself in.

Taako was sitting on the windowsill, his knees drawn up to his chest.  He was staring out through the glass at a field of wildflowers, which surrounded the Starblaster like an endless golden ocean.  He didn’t turn his head to see who’d opened the door.

“Hey, buddy,” he broke the oppressive silence of the room with the most casual tone he could muster.  The elf didn’t react to the sound of his voice, but Merle continued on nonetheless. “I brought you some dinner.  We saved a plate for you, fried mushrooms and some dandelion salad.”

When his friend remained motionless and silent, he briefly considered setting the plate down on the bed and leaving him alone.  The memory of Davenport’s words, and that terrible look in Taako’s eyes on that night in the med bay, refused to let him.

They’d been tiptoeing around Taako for _weeks_ now, treating him like porcelain and glass.  Maybe it was time for a different approach.

“Did I ever tell you,” he began, “About that time I convinced the cafeteria lady back at the Institute to give me an extra helping of fried mushrooms by seducing one of her houseplants?”

The silence stretched on for another several agonizing seconds.  He worried for a moment that Taako was just going to kick him out of his room without a word — or worse, magic missile him directly in the face — when the elf suddenly let out a soft snort.

“You did _what_ , old man?” Taako still wasn’t looking at him, but he thought he could hear something like a smile in the elf’s voice.  

His own face split into an enormous grin.  “I… what do the kids say nowadays? I _sexted_ one of her philodendrons—”

It wasn’t an elegant solution.  It might not have even been a _good_ solution.  But it finally got Taako to talk to them again, and that’s all that mattered.  For the remainder of the year, while the rest of the crew treated Taako like something fragile, Merle was a bull in a china shop.  He told raunchy stories, cracked terrible jokes, performed stupid dances, did anything he possibly could to put an amused half-smile back onto the elf’s face.  

None of them saw Taako laugh again, though, until they flew out of that world on the Starblaster and the white threads of light brought Lup back to them.  Over the sound of Magnus’s relieved wailing and the rest of the crew tearfully welcoming Lup back, the elf threw his arm around his twin’s shoulders and laughed uproariously, declaring that he hadn’t missed her in the least.

That year made him realize something important: his initial assessment of Taako hadn’t been entirely wrong.  The elf _did_ need sanctuary, just— not the kind that he had been thinking of.  

Lup and Taako had been inseparable for most of their lives.  That was something that the rest of the crew already knew from their raucous dinnertime stories about growing up on the road.  But now Merle slowly began to understand that for all those years, the twins had only ever really trusted each other The only place they’d felt safe was at each other’s sides.  To Taako, Lup was _home_.

He thinks, at first, that he could never even come _close_ to understanding the feeling of having that taken away.  Then he remembers how he felt the first time they saw the Hunger destroy a world, how he’d gripped his holy symbol and muttered a futile prayer to Pan, and how his plea for help had gone unacknowledged and unanswered.

He still can’t fully comprehend it.  He hopes that he never will. But he thinks that he at least understands it a little better now.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short story that was a scrapped part of a WIP.


End file.
